Lincoln burial artifact on display at tomb

The story goes that during the most recent reconstruction of President Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in 1930-31, a truck backed into and damaged the marble sarcophagus that had once held Lincoln’s coffin.

Chris Dettro

The story goes that during the most recent reconstruction of President Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in 1930-31, a truck backed into and damaged the marble sarcophagus that had once held Lincoln’s coffin.

The damaged sarcophagus was left outside at Oak Ridge Cemetery, and it didn’t take long for souvenir hunters to finish the job the truck had started.

The remaining pieces of the sarcophagus, which even after Lincoln’s coffin was buried beneath 10 feet of concrete in 1901 had served as a monument to his final resting place, were forgotten.

But in 1978, workers discovered the lost pieces deep in the bowels of the tomb generally underneath the vaults of Mary Todd Lincoln and three of the Lincolns’ sons, where they had been thrown into a pit with other construction debris. They were placed in storage, but out of public view.

Now, a fragment of the original sarcophagus recently has been put on display in the tomb’s Memorial Hall.

“We wanted to do it before now, but didn’t have a proper way of displaying it,” said Mikle Siere Sr., site services specialist at the tomb. “But one of our maintenance men, Carl Williams, was a good builder and built a cabinet for it.”

When the 30 or so pieces — still kept in the interior of the tomb but in an easily accessible area — were discovered, historians compared the fragments to descriptions and pictures and concluded these were indeed from the missing sarcophagus.

The original sarcophagus bore the inscription “With malice towards none, with charity for all.” It also featured the name “Lincoln” and a wreath of oak boughs.

One of the fragments had “rity for all,” part of the letter N from Lincoln’s name and a portion of the oak wreath. That’s the piece that is on display.

Lincoln’s body has been moved many times to guard against grave robbers and allow for tomb renovations. His coffin now rests in a block of cement below a seven-ton burial stone.

His coffin was in the sarcophagus from 1874, when the tomb memorial was completed, until 1876, when some Chicago counterfeiters attempted to steal his body and hold it for ransom. The men actually pried the lid off the sarcophagus but found they couldn’t move the 500-pound coffin.

Secret Service agents, who had been working with another member of the gang, arrested the men, but fearing a successful repeat of the body-snatching attempt, the National Lincoln Monument Association hid Lincoln’s coffin in another part of the tomb.

When Mary Todd Lincoln died in 1882, her remains were placed with those of her husband, but in 1887, both bodies were reburied in a brick vault beneath the floor of the burial room.

During a rebuilding and restoration program in 1899-1901 — four years after the state acquired the memorial — all five caskets were moved to a nearby subterranean vault. In 1901, the bodies were returned to the burial room and Abraham Lincoln’s body was placed back in the sarcophagus.

It was there only a few months until it was moved to its current resting place at the request of Robert Todd Lincoln, the Lincolns’ only surviving son.

The 1930-31 reconstruction dealt mainly with the interior of the tomb, although 15 feet was added to the obelisk at the center of the memorial to make it more symmetrical, Siere said.

“The story of the president’s remains is full of unexpected twists and turns,” said Candy Knox, superintendent of the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site. “We hope seeing this fragment of his sarcophagus helps visitors reflect on that story and, more importantly, on Lincoln’s incredible life.”

Siere says the tomb holds other artifacts relating to the Lincolns and the tomb’s construction and subsequent renovations.

“There has been an idea to rotate some of the pieces of history we have at the tomb,” he said. “We probably need another display cabinet to do that.”

For more information, visit http://www.lincolntomb.org.

Chris Dettro can be reached at 788-1510. Follow him at twitter.com/chrisdettrosjr.

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